The Most Important Habit of Powerful Storytellers

Tell the truth all the time, even if it is horrible, boring, mundane, or makes us look stupid.

What do John Mulaney, Toni Morrison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have in common? They are in the habit of being honest and specific, no matter what.

“In the particular is contained the universal.” ― James Joyce.

We are on a mission to find our particular. It’s not out there in the world, it is within us.

It is so tempting to check stats all day, worry about which headlines will grab people, and think about what topics are popular. Of course, we all know this tends to have the opposite intended effect. Like a wet bar of soap, squeezing tightly only makes it slip away.

Be More Specific!

95% of what most people say is bullshit. They are repeating something they heard, read, or what they think will make them seem cooler. That’s why it seems…vague.

When people are very specific, we light up! Not because we love detail, but because it indicates that this person is telling us something from their actual, real experience as a human being.

So much of what we get from others is a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. Authenticity, then, is like heroin.

That’s incredibly optimistic! Why? Because if we can figure out how to be honest in the midst of all that, suddenly we are unicorns.

It’s tempting to think, “I’m pretty honest.” But, is it true? Because it’s not a given, and if we haven’t made an incredible effort toward honesty, then the chances are close to zero that we are one of the unicorns. It’s hard for a good reason, after all. It makes us vulnerable. We need to learn to be OK with that.

I Lied On A Date

I’ve practiced guitar, on and off, for a couple of years. YouTube tutorials, stuff like that. During quarantine, I picked it back up a little. I practiced until I could play and sing a few songs. My skill level grew to right outside terrible. I was proud.

I had a zoom date recently, and I was telling my date about how I was proud that I could play a song. “Play me one!” she said.

Uh-oh. Ok, well, now I have to play, I think, or I’ll seem all shy.

I pick up the guitar and play. I sing my little song. Wolves.

I finish; she’s glassy-eyed. We look at each other.

“That was pretty good,” she says.

“Well,” I say, panicking, “I picked it up during quarantine, so…”

“Oh, you’ve only been playing a couple of months? That’s pretty good!”

Why did I just lie about that!? To seem mildly cooler about my guitar playing?

Reflecting back on it later, I noticed that the lie made me feel weaker. It’s a subtle feeling, but it’s there if you look. It undermines self-confidence. Self-esteem is the reputation we have with ourselves, and we always know.

Things didn’t work out with her.

What is it about lying or being vague that makes us so weak as storytellers, and, uh, dates?

Personal Vs. Transpersonal

When I was a boy, I had a seizure which entirely shut off the left side of my brain.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor similarly had a stroke that shut off the left side of her brain. Given that I was a child when mine happened, and she describes things beautifully because she is a brilliant scientist, I will quote her as to the difference between how the sides process information. Our experience was largely the same.

Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about ‘right here, right now.’ Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect, we are whole and we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere, our left hemisphere, is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you’ve got to remember to pick up bananas on your way home. I need them in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, ‘I am. I am.’

Each of us has within us a personal consciousness (left) and a transpersonal consciousness (right). For most of us, who live in the world constructed by the left-brain, there is a conspicuous question floating here: Why the hell would we use an entire half of our brain on a non-specific, universal sense of being? What exactly is the right brain for?

When I had my seizure and my left-brain was gone, I no longer could even conceptualize a lie. There was only the truth, and the truth is not always pleasant. I was helpless, and certainly could not take care of myself while the left-brain was offline, but I was one with the stream of life. I could not tell there was a boundary between me and everything else. To me, that seemed like an ideal state of being. I was at total peace and belonging in the universe. I was a non-specific universal entity. The problem is, it’s hard to feed yourself when you’re a non-specific universal entity.

The truth is, no one knows exactly why the right-brain is the way it is. The fact remains, our consciousness grew out of that universal soup in order to survive. And it learned to do lots of things along the way, such as lie. Lying, then, is a short term solution that seems to bring us out of alignment with the universal. To use some religious language, it is a sin for which we must repent in order to re-align ourselves with the one.

The left side of us is the one capable of lying, for whatever reason. It is where our ego is. It wants to make us seem like quick-guitar-learners, it repeats what we heard on a podcast to seem smarter than we are. That’s understandable! We are a social creature and approval from others is nice.

Ok, so what does all of this have to do with being a better storyteller?

Great storytellers have integrated both sides.

They hear the chatter of their left-brain and the experience of their right-brain. The right brain is telling us the truth about our present experience. In order to tell a story that’s not just a copy of some other story, we need to learn to properly listen to it. Then, and only then, we use our left-brain to organize it into original articles, stories, and jokes.

Listening To Experience

“My standup persona is, like, I’ll heighten things, but I’m observing the world as it is in sort of a heightened emotional state.”

- John Mulaney

John Mulaney’s stand up has a strong point of view. It’s clear that he has cultivated an ability to watch himself experiencing the world.

We can cultivate that same ability, but the thing that stops us is lying. Every time we lie, we dampen our ability to hear our own experience. We get caught up in saying things we think people will like. Authenticity is gone, and it’s only a matter of time before people lose interest.

When John jokes about his dad going to the McDonald’s drive-thru with the kids in the back, and buying a single, black cup of coffee for himself, we laugh, because we see our own experience in his specifics.

Of course, this is true for all storytelling, not just comedy.

The better we can learn to watch ourselves without judgement, the better we can tell stories about the specifics in our own lives. A lie is an implicit judgement of ourselves that we are not good enough.

So, to be able to watch ourselves without judgement we have to stop lying. And, if we do, we have to laugh at ourselves.

Originally published at https://www.taylorforeman.com on July 13, 2020.